Saturday, July 01, 2006

AUTOGNOME 11 SCANNED AND TWEAKED PARTY POLAROID JOIN THE SELF PORTRAIT MARATHON 11:57:46 PM    comment []

SCENIC TULSA: SIGNS OF THE TIMES After Mrs. Dr. Omed picked me up at the bookstore noonish, we passed this single protester at the corner of 41st and Yale on the way to lunch. The day was getting hot and there she was, pacing back and forth barefoot on the blazing concrete. I snapped these dpics, and gave her the thumb's up. There she stood, alone, speaking her truth by way of a crudely lettered sign to eyes protected by tinted glass, to air cooled souls swathed in steel and plastic, standing on hot pavement, breathing their—our—exhaust. 3:54:21 PM    comment []

MADE IN AMERICA? (3) On Saturday morning when Mrs. Dr. Omed goes to the gym and does her daily workout, Dr. Omed is taken along and parked at a nearby coffeehouse or brand box bookstore. Today it was the bookstore. As is my wont, I wander about, gather and peruse a stack of books and magazines, taking obscure, illegible notes in my memorandum book. Oddly enough, considering how much of a bibliomaniac I am, I always feel I am in enemy territory, hoping that my cognito remains in. Not only is the brand box bookstore full of people, which massages my agoraphobia the wrong way, it is full of "book" product that is a disgrace to the honored tradition of book publishing, to literature, and literacy itself—whole forests reduced to pulp to print profitable pap. My manic brain snarls in my head like a wolf in a cage as (mixing the metaphor and topping it with a paper umbrella) I prowl, looking for the pearls among the slop. Want to take a fast slide to the bottom of the bell curve, and see who lives there?—go to a suburban box bookstore. As (almost) always, I had my dcam in my pocket, and I pursued one of my many intermittently continuing projects, MADE IN AMERICA? In the picture above is the OFFICIAL U.S. MINT 50 STATE QUARTERS COLLECTOR'S ARCHIVE: You'll have to forgive the glare from the shrink wrap. You'd think something like this patriotic album (presumably the purchaser provides his or her own quarters) sanctioned by the United States Mint, the producer of our currency, that puts the "IN GOD WE TRUST" in our pockets, would surely be made in the good old USA... NOT! 3:01:58 PM    comment []